Huh. This made me curious about JSON which led to <a href="https://github.com/Wiguwbe/bash-json" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/Wiguwbe/bash-json</a><p>I have had to graft JSON into legacy bash files enough times that this is worth another look.
Interesting! A use case I could see for using builtins would be to gradually rewrite a bash script in some other language, as otherwise you have to do it through subprocess which can be slow and inconvenient.